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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 29, 2022 18:56:41 GMT
We have a list for listing some of our favorites, but what about a thread for gushing? I'm re-reading Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins right now. I've been having a hard time recently, and out of all the books on my shelf, this one felt right to just... fall back into. I'm realizing that out of all my favorite books, this is the one I have the deepest connection with. Some others may be intellectually engaging, but this is a balm for the soul.  This book is unique. I've never read anything remotely like it. A plotless coming-of-age story about teenagers just... learning how to play guitar, or fixing a sink, or learning to drive, or talking about Nancy Drew, or any of a thousand other things that people do that don't mean anything and yet total up to a life that does. It is about first crushes, first loves, the first time that you look at someone and realize that you want to hold her hand as the lights turn on at the used car lot. It's about the fear that love will never happen, that you'll miss your chance. Sure, lots of other stories are about these things, but they don't capture the same spirit as Criss Cross. It is riotously funny, but not in any conventional way. Her sense of humor is indescribable. The closest comparison I can think of is Steve Martin's novel Shopgirl. I don't have words for what Perkins does here, the way she puts irony into the mundane to make me crack up. Like Hector's reaction to visiting the local community college: Anyway, this is great stuff. The last few chapters of this are my vote for the most heartrending ending of anything I've ever encountered. Also, I discovered Greensleeves because of this book, and that's a contender for the #1 greatest song of all time. Ho hum. I'm gonna curl up with a cup of tea and read some more. |
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urbanpatrician
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"I just wanna go back, back to 1999. back to hit me baby one more time" - Charli XCX
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Post by urbanpatrician on Jan 30, 2022 12:32:53 GMT
Here goes. I'm not a books guy and I admit a certain degree of plebbiness with books since I am a movies guy firstly, and to a lesser extent a music guy...... but these are the 4 I'm crazy about:
The Moviegoer (Walker Percy, 1961) - It's magical. Close to arthouse literature.... if it was a movie Malick, Antonioni, or Sofia would be over it I'm gonna guess. Only Malick wishes he has anything that explorative. Malick always bogs himself down in his own navel, but this book has everything his films doesn't. The power of the dying southern era, an old soul in conflict with a modernizing world, and the young cousin character who can have herself a standalone book written just for her. He can see what he's not in his cousin, but yet can see what he is. This simultaneous dichotomy is so perfect. His envy for his cousin for embodying the youth and innocence he's lost. Yet he feels she repairs and completes the missing parts of himself. The last scenes are perfect, the fragmented glimpses I get, the imagery of him and his cousin wandering that backdrop. So perfect. This tinge of old America is powerful. The era just feels like the word splendor belongs somewhere in the title. Malick must've read this book because the Sean Penn character in The Tree of Life feels based on the main character, but he misses the mark so badly on what his character was about that he ruins it. I heard he tried to adapt this book, so I guess he takes after this book.
Runaway (Alice Munro, 2004) - This book is so strange. The narratives have no basis in logic it feels like. Just random unresolute passages. But I just love the way it kinds of shifts, it goes one way but then totally goes on another random surreal tangent. Just my kind of thing I guess is why I connect with it.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, 1900) - The godfather of all fantasy begins and ends here. I like the movie a lot just for its recreation of this world, but it doesn't cover 1/20 the content the book does. The book feels like this long epic journey and these fantastical elements has these twists and turns and peaks. It's so exciting. An adventure like no other. It was my favorite book when I was like 8 or 9 - I can't let it go 25 years later.
City of Girls (Elizabeth Gilbert, 2019) - Another one of those flash back to the times of a golden age. Always a sucker for those kinds of books. Such a layered book that once I'm finished I feel like I read a thick chronicle of life and times of this character thru 80 years of her life. And the backdrop 1940s New York. OMG. I bought this book off of a whim one day expecting it to be a favorite, and it delivered just that. Just an experience like no other. There is so much sex and booze, and the allure of the highest pinnacle of life as depicted. Yet also low points of sadness and disappointment. Just spellbinding.
Currently reading The Awakening (1899) - Good shit. Maybe it'll make this list once I'm finished.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 30, 2022 13:09:09 GMT
I used to read a lot.......I used to watch a lot of movies ......now I just listen to a lot of records and eat a lot of pizza.  1, Fred Exley - A Fan's Notes - "The Replacements" of American novels - so funny you want to cry, so sad it makes you laugh at its absurdity. 2. Albert Camus - The Stranger - - The Matthew Ward translation but any will do.......has the most text that I quote irl than any novel - and this is a short novel - "as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent.” - I mean ......damn 3. Jerzy Kosinski - Steps - As a writer Kosinski suffered a sad fate - accused of plagiarism and suffering from an illness he committed suicide ......BUT no one ever accused Kosinski of plagiarizing this book and while you could say that about some of his others - none of them are as coherent a vision as this. A series of vignettes or scenes that are at times funny, often repellent and which form a kind of grotesque portrait of trauma and human behavior at its most inhuman. A masterpiece. 4. Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Carver liked his longer story collection Cathedral more - but while I love that too - the ruthless editing of his publisher enhances the stories and incororates a lot of mysteries and enigmas. If you like A Fan's Notes - I can't imagine someone not liking this - and if you don't like A Fan's Notes, it's like not liking The Replacements so ........um......... 5. Edgar Allan Poe - The Portable Poe - Essential, terrifying, funny, and STILL modern in feel and relevance and I suspect always will be. He's my Stephen King ........he's Stephen King's too I would bet. This version is necessary because: 1. It includes Hop Frog which is awesome and 2. It cherry picks great poems and some of his letters which inform the stories.........      |
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 30, 2022 14:42:08 GMT
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, 1900) - The godfather of all fantasy begins and ends here. I like the movie a lot just for its recreation of this world, but it doesn't cover 1/20 the content the book does. The book feels like this long epic journey and these fantastical elements has these twists and turns and peaks. It's so exciting. An adventure like no other. It was my favorite book when I was like 8 or 9 - I can't let it go 25 years later. Have you read the sequels? I've only read the first one and immediately bought it for my bookshelf (I re-read books more than I read new ones, so it makes sense for me to keep my favorites stocked). |
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jan 31, 2022 7:08:09 GMT
2. Albert Camus - The Stranger - - The Matthew Ward translation but any will do.......has the most text that I quote irl than any novel - and this is a short novel - "as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent.” - I mean ......damn We’ve talked about The Stranger in the past, before I read the Matthew Ward translation, and I actually read that version a couple years ago having only read the Gilbert translation a long time ago. I enjoyed it, but I think my opinion on the novel overall has shifted somewhat (not because of the translation though). I used to like it more than I do now, and it might be because I’m not entirely sure how to “take” it after thinking about it more. I never studied the book in school and haven’t really looked into any in-depth analyses of the text, so I’m just going off my own impressions of it: To me, the plot is structured such that the protagonist’s most forthright statement of his philosophy acts as a climax at the end and as a kind of justification (or really anti-justification) for his actions. We get into his headspace about how he doesn’t care about life because what is there to care about ultimately anyway, etc. – and he uses that to suggest that he isn't morally wrong in his actions/choices.
I know that according to Camus’s absurdist philosophy, morality has no natural basis…… but if you step outside the narrator's mental space, he's kind of nothing more than just a selfish asshole. He seems to convince himself that his actions aren't his own because he doesn't really care/have any real feelings/motivations and he's really just a victim of fate. He basically says "The sun was just so hot and so I shot that guy"….. but the plot tells us that this guy on the beach had offended the narrator, the narrator stews about this for a couple of hours, then goes to look for this guy, finally finds him and shoots him. Just because the narrator *tells* us that he didn't have any specific feelings about the guy he murdered doesn't make it actually so because his actions would say otherwise. The narrator's inability to admit to these things doesn't suddenly excuse him from being morally guilty… and maybe the whole point is that we’re hearing the story from the POV of an unreliable narrator, and I don’t think we’re necessarily supposed to empathize with the narrator but rather at least see how his viewpoint worked for him in a self-consistent way. But to me it kind of just becomes the story of someone who is rationalizing his own sociopathy with this philosophical front or is just blind to it or in denial. Ultimately the protagonist felt emotionally immature, not profound or poetic in his worldview.
So while I think the novel is interesting for its presentation of a particular philosophy, I’m not sure how much I like it as a character study since the protagonist isn’t really all that compelling to me. Sorry for the rant, just curious what your thoughts were… |
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 31, 2022 9:34:29 GMT
2. Albert Camus - The Stranger - - The Matthew Ward translation but any will do.......has the most text that I quote irl than any novel - and this is a short novel - "as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent.” - I mean ......damn We’ve talked about The Stranger in the past, before I read the Matthew Ward translation, and I actually read that version a couple years ago having only read the Gilbert translation a long time ago. I enjoyed it, but I think my opinion on the novel overall has shifted somewhat (not because of the translation though). I used to like it more than I do now, and it might be because I’m not entirely sure how to “take” it after thinking about it more. I never studied the book in school and haven’t really looked into any in-depth analyses of the text, so I’m just going off my own impressions of it: To me, the plot is structured such that the protagonist’s most forthright statement of his philosophy acts as a climax at the end and as a kind of justification (or really anti-justification) for his actions. We get into his headspace about how he doesn’t care about life because what is there to care about ultimately anyway, etc. – and he uses that to suggest that he isn't morally wrong in his actions/choices.
I know that according to Camus’s absurdist philosophy, morality has no natural basis…… but if you step outside the narrator's mental space, he's kind of nothing more than just a selfish asshole. He seems to convince himself that his actions aren't his own because he doesn't really care/have any real feelings/motivations and he's really just a victim of fate. He basically says "The sun was just so hot and so I shot that guy"….. but the plot tells us that this guy on the beach had offended the narrator, the narrator stews about this for a couple of hours, then goes to look for this guy, finally finds him and shoots him. Just because the narrator *tells* us that he didn't have any specific feelings about the guy he murdered doesn't make it actually so because his actions would say otherwise. The narrator's inability to admit to these things doesn't suddenly excuse him from being morally guilty… and maybe the whole point is that we’re hearing the story from the POV of an unreliable narrator, and I don’t think we’re necessarily supposed to empathize with the narrator but rather at least see how his viewpoint worked for him in a self-consistent way. But to me it kind of just becomes the story of someone who is rationalizing his own sociopathy with this philosophical front or is just blind to it or in denial. Ultimately the protagonist felt emotionally immature, not profound or poetic in his worldview.
So while I think the novel is interesting for its presentation of a particular philosophy, I’m not sure how much I like it as a character study since the protagonist isn’t really all that compelling to me. Sorry for the rant, just curious what your thoughts were… Oh I think that's a spot on analysis of the character ......people (in the general sense, me in the specific) love the book because of how it uses him - it's a warning tale. The book presents a panorama in many ways aside from the seeming plot - ie there is a religious component ("Monsieur Anti-Christ", the priest), a family component ("Maman died today" in the Ward, people without (or with) family, the neighbor etc), a relationship - love component (Marie), work (vague but still there), legal (the absurd trial), incarceration (literal, metaphorical) and on and on........by placing that character, with that worldview at the center of society's institutions - the things that allow all of us to live, always - the book spreads out. I think like most things it depends when you first read it and where your life goes from there - I read it at as a teen (I'm now 284, um) and what it meant to me then has changed but not lessened - I like it more. People may roll their eyes but The Stranger is in many ways where I found Punk Rock - which saved my life to be overdramatic about it. Much of its same worldview is in Punk and predates it by decades - yet it can and can not be briefly explained like the best things in Art and Life. To me it always comes down to the most human parts of the book transcending the starting point - where Mersault should strive to be redeemed - he doesn't (at all) - and how each experience ties into the philosophy yet removes you from him........... "the newspaper clipping scene" for example where a story repeated in the press - another institution - presents an absurd tale that was published and endures (recording the truth or justifying the lie?), therefore making it "real" - with a character (in the newspaper story) who had nothing of Mersault's conscious choices - none of his worldview - yet suffers the exact same fate. Did he though? Exact same? To Mersault maybe........ to anyone else probably not...........Mersault never says he sees it that way either - yet most people think he does say it. We put that connection ON Mersault....... The book is ingenious in how it lets him off the hook for things we are reading in the text that Mersault himself does not actually articulate. It's the space in between the words ....... It's those moments where the book is neither simply philosophy or simply character study (though it has huge elements of both and of course always is) - it is mostly a cautionary tale to me. You get more out of the book imo when you contrast people to Mersault rather than see them all simply within his window. In movie terms it's closest I guess to Travis Bickle - I think if people can love Taxi Driver and love the character of Travis without loving Travis himself - you also can apply some of the same critical analysis to The Stranger and get much out of it. The book / film can be profound or poetic when the lead is not of course.....I think Mersault can be a dealbreaker for a lot of people though, definitely  |
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Post by jimmalone on Feb 16, 2022 12:04:11 GMT
Well, I just re-read for the about 10th time "Le Comte de Monte Christo", which is probably in my Top 3 of all time.
It's absolutely incredible what Dumas packs in those book. Drama, Thriller, Romance, Crime, Society, History, Morals all mixed up so great and in well built-up story.
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urbanpatrician
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Post by urbanpatrician on Mar 11, 2022 7:45:45 GMT
I found my #5 favorite book of all time. Top 4 I've already stated above ^
Et tu, Babe (Mark Leyner, 1992)Awesome surrealist randomness. My kind of thing. Can't get enough of it. I'm 1/3 of the way in, and I feel like this book and this author is Top 5 with a style that is always going to work for me. Hint.... surrealism in books is far superior with far more likelihood of success ratio than committed to movies which can suck badly. This book CANNOT be adapted. There's absolutely no way. There is a couple of TV creators that can be seen as similar but even then not similar as there's a uniqueness about this that can't be adapted. The Visceral Tattoo part is a a prime example of why it can't be adapted.   |
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